Craig Ruvere

17Jun 2021 by CJ

Make every interaction count to help build your overall customer experience

Generosity & Kindness, Information & Education

“Make every interaction count, even the small ones. They are all relevant.” - Shep Hyken The pandemic has forced some industries to the brink of extinction while allowing others to flourish at unprecedented levels. One of those industries is home improvement. As people found themselves at home more than they’d ever been before over the last year, they started to notice the “imperfections” of their environment and suddenly the industry exploded. Halfway through 2020, searches for home improvement companies were up almost 50% and according to Porch.com, 3 out of 4 homeowners surveyed completed a major renovation project since the start of Covid-19, and roughly the same percentage already have one scheduled. With this flurry of new business, one might hope that home improvement companies have not lost a critical…

07Jun 2021 by CJ

Video games as adults – would you play hopscotch too?

Youth

Growing up, I used to love playing video games. My next-door neighbor and I would spend hours camped out in my basement for our daily competition to see who would go farther on Super Mario Bros. I also used to love digging in the dirt with my toy backhoe and dump trump, playing pretend with my Transformer action figures, and making mud meatballs out of the clay soil in the back of my garage. Ah to be young with nothing but idle time on your hands. I used to do a lot of things when I was younger - things that wouldn’t seem very appropriate if you found me doing them at 46 years old. Could you imagine what the neighbors would say if they saw me playing with my…

01Jun 2021 by CJ

Hermit life teaches us how to live for a living each day

Life & Living

I recently read a book by Michael Finkel entitled The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit. The title sounded intriguing to me after growing tired of reading a series of self-help books that were designed to inspire but did little to do so. The book tells the real-life story of Christopher Knight, who in 1986 left his childhood home in Massachusetts (at the age of 20) and spent the next 27 years living alone as a hermit in the woods of Maine without any human interaction. After being caught stealing necessary supplies from an unoccupied summer camp, Knight was forced back into the society he abandoned some 27 years prior. Thrust into a world he no longer understood and struggled to reacclimate himself to.…

16May 2021 by CJ

Putzing around the house shows you’re still engaged in life

Life & Living

My grandparents were famous for what they called putzing around the house. Considered slang, it’s often described as engaging in aimless recreation or frivolous time-wasting, but I can assure you it meant just the opposite for my grandparents – and me. Putzing around the house wasn’t about laziness at all for my grandparents. On the contrary, it was born from their inability to waste the time they were given. While I’m not saying that my grandparents didn’t enjoy mindless entertainment on occasion, if given the choice they were often putzing around the house whether outside picking weeds from their garden beds, organizing the garage or closets, making a few batches of eggplant parmesan to bring to family and friends, or a host of other random tasks which brought a sense…

04May 2021 by CJ

“Too busy” is not an appropriate excuse to ignore someone

Generosity & Kindness

I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard friends, family members, and especially co-workers say to me “I’m just too busy right now” as though it’s an appropriate excuse for what boils down to people undeniably ignoring you. I’d be able to retire comfortably before I turn 50! Yes, there are times in everyone’s life when we’re all too busy with our careers, our families, even projects around the house. But I turn to this quote from blogger and writer Mandy Hale who writes, “A person being “too busy” is a myth. People make time for the things that are really important to them!” Why if I didn’t know better, I’d say that Mandy is insinuating that people who often say “they’re too busy” are politely trying to say…